Several people have called me in the past week asking how I could help them create or spot new opportunities in their businesses. "Chance favors the prepared mind", so the saying goes. So, it follows that if you had a repertoire of examples of different generic opportunity windows, you can use them as a templates for either 1) designing opportunity windows for your business or 2) as a checklist for scanning to spot unique opportunity scenarios when the circumstances present themselves.
I've actually developed a workshop on that topic that I call the Opportunity Clinic (c) & here's an overview and example
The Opportunity Clinic is a robust methodology and framework bundled into a two day workshop that I developed in the 1980’s and 1990’s that helps companies, large and small explore their emerging “opportunity space”. I got the idea from Aultshuller's TRIZ model, which are essentially invention formula's or invention algorithms developed from his search of patents in the former Soviet Union (FSU). He came up with 40 principles. Why can't the same be done for opportunity examples and ideas? It's like taking an opportunity window and asking yourself: What's that an example of? or What's the underlying concept or principle here? and how do I transfer that concept from one application area (where it's common) to another, where it's novel or foreign?
It’s applicable to individual products or services, clusters of products or services, or industry verticals. It can be used at any point in the product life cycle and works at any time of the business cycle from downturns and depression to market upswings. (Hint: downswings actual produce the most new opportunity windows, but most companies are in too much of a panic to recognise them)
The Opportunity Clinic helps companies answer such basic questions about opportunity windows as: Could it Happen? Will it Happen? How will it Happen? Should it Happen? and align their opportunity windows with the best time to launch them in their product /service life cycle or business life cycle.
The Opportunity Clinic can focus on up to 20 “vectors” to look for or design opportunity windows, but usually we just concentrat on one or two in a session, ie, designing or creating opportunity windows for marketing, sales, branding, R&D, new products etc. While most useful in business setting, the Opportunity Clinic can also be used by the not-for-profit sector and government ministries and agencies
The actual process is a fairly simple 7 step excercise, done over two or more days, as part of a strategy retreat.
I work with a client to:
1) identify what an opportunity window is and develop a list of the current opportunity scenarios that the organization takes advantage of now, or will in the near future
2) map out their current cluster of opportunity windows/scenarios and populate the Generic Opportunity Map.
3) move forward; we then focus on the white spaces, the cells on the Generic Opportunity Map that are blank and ask why?
4) design new opportunity windows; depending on where the client’s products/services are in their life cycle, we then work with a client to ‘co-design” new concepts for opportunity windows using lateral thinking skills (based on the work I did as Director of the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange in Toronto)
5) compare tactics from unrelated industry verticals; alternatively we resort to selected examples from a list of over 250 generic opportunity windows from various industries that we have in our database (see example below)
6) prioritize ideas; working with a client’s existing stage /gate process we help a client prioritize their list of novel opportunity windows, based on selected criteria and requirements
7)farm out low priority opportunity windows; if good opportunity windows are designed that don’t fit into the client’s strategic mix, we explore creative ways to farm out these opportunity windows to other third parties and still benefit from the ideas.
Here's an example from our Generic Opportunity Windows Database
[…]
3.0 Operating Asset Opportunities Via Concept Challenge (how do we do things)
3.1 The Business Model Opportunity Window
3.1.1 Steady fixed pricing Opportunity Window vs Dynamic pricing Opportunity Window
3.1.1.1 Time-based dynamic pricing Opportunity Window
a retail outlet in Rochester drops prices on men’s and women’s clothes; the longer that clothes sit on the rack the steeper the price drop, till it hits the wholesale floor level price
3.1.1.2 Demand-based dynamic pricing Opportunity Window
the new Coke Vending machines change pricing based on weather and demand for the product
3.1.1.3 Dynamic volume-discounting Opportunity Window
LetsBuyIt.com a Dutch European e-tailer operated with an innovative twist on the standard e-tail business model: as more users requested a product, bulk-buying discounts were passed on to customers and the price comes down. Its shopping site offered more than 50,000 products and services this way, notably consumer electronics from makers such as Aiwa, Logitech, Nikon and Pentax. Source: TechWeb Jan 1,2001 http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010101S0001
Want to learn more? Call or email me asking about the Opportunity Clinic for your organization
© 2005-2007
Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "
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